AP - Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

Reuters - Chinese officials have ordered state-owned companies to meet with investment bankers to explore potential options to block BHP Billiton's $39 billion bid for Canada's Potash Corp, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

AP - A Portuguese court found six men and one woman guilty Friday of crimes relating to child sex abuse in a major trial that lasted nearly six years, a prosecution lawyer said.

AFP - Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras on Friday unveiled a huge share offering which could raise 64 billion dollars to help finance new exploration projects in the country.

AFP - Nigerian police on Friday named three rival gang members as suspects in the murder of a notorious ex-militant, whose killing has sparked fears of fresh violence in the country's oil-producing region.

AFP - Cypriot tycoon Asil Nadir, one of the country's most high-profile fugitives, finally appeared in court Friday after 17 years on the run to face claims he stole a fortune from his collapsed firm Polly Peck.

AFP - An Indonesian volcano unleashed its most violent eruption in 400 years Friday, sending a tower of ash into the sky but failing to budge a handful of stoic villagers who live on its slopes.

AP - Suicide bombings targeting religious minorities killed at least 44 people in Pakistan on Friday, sharply driving up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country already battered by massive flooding.

Reuters - Wall Street was poised for a strong open on Friday after a better-than-expected jobs report lifted investor optimism on the economy.

Reuters - U.S. employment fell for a third straight month in August, but the drop was far less than expected and private payrolls growth surprised on the upside, easing pressure on the Federal Reserve to prop up growth.

AP - Unlike the blast that led to the massive BP spill, the latest oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico killed no one and sent no crude gushing into the water.

Reuters - Campbell Soup Co posted lower-than-expected quarterly sales and forecast sales growth for the new fiscal year would be below its long-term target as the world's largest soup company grapples with a weak economy.

AP - A scientist has been detained at the Miami International Airport after screeners spotted a metal canister in his luggage that looked like a pipe bomb, prompting an evacuation, a government official said.

AP - A Turkish Cypriot businessman who voluntarily returned to Britain after 17 years to face fraud charges learned Friday that he will have to wait more than a year for the trial he insists will vindicate him.

AP - A weakened Hurricane Earl howled past North Carolina's Outer Banks before daybreak Friday on its way up the East Coast, flooding parts of the narrow vacation islands and knocking out power but staying farther offshore than feared. There were no immediate reports of any injuries.

AP - The Campbell Soup Co. reported a larger fourth-quarter net income Friday, a time when the temperature rises and its soup sales traditionally drop.

AP - U.S. Agriculture Department employees worked full-time at two Iowa egg farms at the center of a salmonella outbreak and massive recall, but two former workers said they ignored complaints about conditions at one site.

AP - Pro-government militiamen attacked the home of an Iranian opposition leader with homemade bombs and beat one of his bodyguards unconscious, an opposition website reported, in an apparent attempt to keep him from attending a key rally on Friday.

AP - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday he saw and heard evidence that the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is taking hold in critical Kandahar province.

AP - Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook — especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world.

AP - Soldiers killed at least 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has become one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the country's drug war.

AFP - Retail sales across the 16 nations sharing the euro rose by a modest 0.1 percent in July, after a 0.2 percent increase in June, with drops in Germany and Spain, European Union data showed on Friday.

AP - Actor Paul Hogan, star of the "Crocodile Dundee" movie trilogy, has been cleared to return home to the United States after he was barred last month from leaving Australia because of a disputed tax bill, his lawyer said Friday.

AP - When Ruth Garcia's twins are born in two months, they'll have all the rights of U.S. citizens. They and their six brothers and sisters will be able to vote, apply for federal student loans and even run for president.

AP - Former Dodger CEO Jamie McCourt was more concerned with protecting the couple's luxurious homes than dealing with baseball matters and didn't want to take the risk associated with buying one of baseball's most storied franchises six years ago, her estranged husband said.

Time.com - Nine weeks before the midterm elections, Barack Obama finds himself on the wrong side of the polls. Where did all that adoration go -- and is a Republican sweep next?

AP - Like many other vets, Don Fosburg marked the anniversary of World War II's end reflecting on a victory dearly earned and on men who helped make that happen but never came home.

AP - With less than two weeks before Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn awards a lucrative, first-of-its-kind contract for the private management of the state's $2 billion-a-year lottery, some are criticizing the selection process as too secretive and questioning whether it favors one powerful bidder.

AP - A 9-year-old boy ran to get cash from his mother's purse to appease an armed intruder, but when he returned the man was stabbing his parents with a kitchen knife in the bedroom, according to recently released search warrants in the triple murder case.